


There Will Be No Peace

by flibbertygigget



Series: The Other 51 [43]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men (Original Timeline Movies), x-men days of future past
Genre: Bad Future, Character Study, DoFP Focused, First Kiss, Inspired by Poetry, M/M, Original Timeline Focused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 01:16:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7597738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbertygigget/pseuds/flibbertygigget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles, Erik thought, had always been a fool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Will Be No Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [ "There Will Be No Peace"](http://listserv.virtueonline.org/pipermail/virtueonline_listserv.virtueonline.org/2001-October/002794.html) by W.H. Auden.

Charles, Erik thinks, had always been a fool.

Even now, after the Sentinels had been perfected and were about to be set loose on the world,  _their_ world, the professor wouldn't lift a finger to help.

"Charles, please," he begs, and it's the first time that name has slipped from his lips without heat behind it in years. Here, he cannot be angry, just desperate.

"We must be able to coexist with them, Erik," Charles says, but he is obviously hopeless. Everything he has always fought against Erik for has proven to be a fantasy. "Peace will come. Cooler heads and warmer hearts will prevail." Erik just shakes his head.

"There will be no peace."

 

> _Though mild clear weather_  
>  _Smile again on the shire of your esteem_  
>  _And its colors come back, the storm has changed you:_  
>  _You will not forget, ever,_  
>  _The darkness blotting out hope, the gale_  
>  _Prophesying your downfall_

Outside the bubble of Xavier's School, the world is screaming.

The inside of Cerebro reminds Erik of metal screeching against metal, of buildings collapsing as he tears away their supports. Charles, always so open and free with his emotions, is crying.

"They're killing us," Erik says. Charles nods slowly, trying to discreetly wipe away the tears that have fallen.

"Perhaps you were right, Erik," he says. "Perhaps they will always hate us." The admission is not the victory that Erik always thought it would be.

"You have friends, contacts in the government," he says almost soothingly. "Perhaps they can..."

"My friend, don't try to lie to me," Charles says. "I know a lost cause when I see one." He looks up at the red figures. So many in pain, so many fighting, so many flickering out each moment. "I wish I could believe that this end was not inevitable." Charles' cynicism and defeat, too much like his own, make Erik feel sick. 

"This does not need to be the end," says Erik.

 

> _You must live with your knowledge:_  
>  _Way back, beyond, outside of you are others,_  
>  _In moonless absences you never heard of,_  
>  _Who have certainly heard of you,_  
>  _Beings of unknown number and gender:_  
>  _And they do not like you._

There are times when it hits Erik that he and Charles came by their realizations of the futility of compromise, of the cruelty of humanity as a whole as opposed to the individual, in very different ways.

Erik came by it through experience, plain and simple. Before there were yellow stars and barbed-wire ghettos and, in the end, Auschwitz and Schmidt. What is happening to mutants is the same slow progression. First registration, then the "cure," and now... extermination. He is not surprised; he always knew it would eventually come to this, to war. Still, the situation was dire enough for him to never say "I told you so."

Charles, on the other hand, came by it slowly, the weight of a thousand desperate minds gradually breaking through his naivety and forgiving nature. Charles felt everything. Every desperate scream, every child made miserable for being different was him, every life snuffed out too soon was his life as well. And, still, it had taken the government approving the use of the Sentinels for his belief that everything would turn out alright, that one day they would be able to live in harmony with the human race, to finally be destroyed.

Erik doesn't know which is worse: his long lifetime of bearing all that pain and hatred, or Charles' thousands of smaller ones. He knows that he would never wish for Charles' burden for himself.

 

> _What have you done to them?_  
>  _Nothing? Nothing is not an answer:_  
>  _You will come to believe-how can you help it?-_  
>  _That you did, you did do something;  
>  _ _You will find yourself wishing you could make them laugh;  
>  _ _You will long for their friendship._

Eventually the School falls. It is inevitable, really, but Charles insists on holding out against the Sentinels as long as possible, and Erik cannot begrudge him this. The School is-or was-the last place of safety for those mutants with nowhere else to turn.

After it falls, they escape, barely. Charles sits in the passenger seat of the car that Erik has borrowed. To anyone else it would appear that he is simply looking out the window, but Erik knows that he is, for lack of a better term,  _brooding_.

"I don't brood," says Charles, and for a moment it is 1962, and Erik has just learned that he is not alone, swept away by this insane, petulant, terrible, beautiful man.

"Of course not," Erik says, making sure to broadcast to Charles just how much he doesn't believe that. Charles sighs, sounding older than he has any right to be.

"I'm not, it is only... Was there never another option? I had been so hopeful for the future, Erik. The anti-mutant sentiment never went away, but it had seemed to get better over the years. People like Stryker and Trask became fewer, and I saw at least a few bills meant to protect us be bullied through Congress. But now... Now we are back where we started."

"On a beach in Cuba," Erik muses, and then he allows his lips to quirk, "with you." Charles' hand reaches over to squeeze Erik's where it lays on the armrest.

"Yes, my friend," he says, "always with you. That has not changed at least."

"Would you have stopped me from turning those missiles," Erik says, "if you knew what was going to happen to us down the line?"

"No more than you would have not turned them around if you knew that my vision would prevail," Charles says lightly. "We will always do what we think is right, Erik, we're both stubborn bastards like that." Erik makes a soft humming noise, debating with himself.

"I do not believe I am as inflexible as you make me out to be," he says cautiously. Charles gives him a tired smile.

"If that were true, my friend, I would have converted you years ago," he says.

 

> _There will be no peace._  
>  _Fight back, then, with such courage as you have_  
>  _And every unchivalrous dodge you know of,_  
>  _Clear your conscience on this:_  
>  _Their cause, if they had one, is nothing to them now;_  
>  _They hate for hate's sake_

The first time that they come upon human police and not one of the Sentinels, Charles doesn't want Erik to hurt them. Erik doesn't listen to him.

The first time that they come upon a small group of mutants, who seem so hopeful to see them, Charles wants to take them along, shelter them. Erik refuses.

He refuses to let Charles risk them now. He has lost so much (his mother, his friends). He cannot lose Charles as well, now matter how much he tries to put them in a situation that would make it harder for them to survive.

"How can you still care, after all they've done?" he snaps one day when Charles knocks out a group of humans arms with bats and knives before Erik can kill them.

"They are still human," Charles says calmly, as though he hasn't just risked everything, as though what he did was a perfectly reasonable response when they were being hunted down like animals. "They have a capacity to grow, Erik, I felt it, and I cannot in good conscience cut short such a life."

"It was still a damn fool thing to do," Erik says. "What if they go to the authorities? If they got our license plate, we're dead. Do you even think?"

"I made sure to wipe their minds of the license plate, Erik. Don't worry."

"That's not the point!"

"Than what, pray tell, is your point?"

"The point is that I lo- I care about you, Charles, and I want us to both survive this war. I know it's not going to end anytime soon, but... when it does, I want you by my side. I can't allow you to risk yourself, not when you're the only one left."

"Oh, Erik," Charles says, and he sounds unfathomably sad. "And yet you call me naive. This war will not end, Erik, not in our lifetimes. If the Sentinels don't get us, some gang like those men back there will."

"Don't say that, Charles. It doesn't suit you." Erik leans down, and he hesitantly allows his hand to brush Charles' cheek. "I don't care how long this lasts. Even if it lasts to the end of both of our lifetimes, I will die happy if I did it trying to give us one more day together." Charles gasps a little as Erik's hand comes more firmly under his chin.

"We really did waste far too many years fighting each other, Erik," he says.

"Than we shall take care not to waste any more." It feels natural for Erik to swoop down and give Charles a kiss.


End file.
